Google Launches Google Print

Rescate writes "As reported by Reuters,Google is launching Google Print, which will show book excerpts next to regular Google search results. A spokesman said, "We're trying to index every book there is, and make it searchable for our users." Even though this competes with Amazon's A9 search which also searches within books, Google says the two companies will continue to work together, and that Google Print will link to Amazon, as well as other sellers, to buy books listed in the search results. Google will demonstrate the technology Thursday, Oct. 7 at the Frankfurt Book Fair."

Comments

See also...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Betas Google Print

Re:See also...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, based on some of the searches they offer now, you can see some of the future searches they may offer. Travel? Games? Sports?

Example...

[tommertron]

In case anyone wants a real live example:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie =utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=mastering+digital+photograph y

Available *now*

[Anonymous Coward]

The service is already available. Try searching for war and peace (no quotes). There will be separate link with books icon. Click on it and you can view book pages!!!
Project Gutenberg isn't useful to Google because they display picture of every page. You can even see the book covers.

Piracy

[b0lt]

No... you CAN'T read a book through this.
From Google Print's FAQ:

Can I read an entire book online?

No, afraid not. Google Print is designed to help you discover books, not read them from start to finish. It's like going to a bookstore and browsing - only with a Google twist. Google searches across entire books in order to find the pages that are most relevant to your search. Once you're on a book page, you can 'flip' two pages forward and back, view other information about the book and even conduct another search within the book.

See for your self

[mishmash]

Click here to see some google print results.

Re:See for your self

[McDutchie]

And here are all 12,100 of them so far/a?.

Re:The publishers are adamantly against this

[MushMouth]

Amazon has a lot of safeguards for the publishers that I do not see google putting in place. A) You actually have to log in with a valid account (I believe that means a valid Credit Card on file too) so see search inside the book pages. B) there is a fairly small maximum number of pages that can be looked at per day something like 20 pages TOTAL C) the books are displayed as images, not as text.

Re:Launched?

[iMaple]

RTFF (FAQ) to use it just google normally.
An example search for The time machine ?
Time machine Shows the book.

The pages are shown as images and u can read upto 3 pages in this case.

Easily Circumvented Copy Protection

[contagious_d]

OK, I know that google says on the FAQ that the ability to print and copy images on their book pages is disabled, and if you re-enable the context menu, you just get a clear 1 by 1 image if you try to copy it, but it makes it pretty pointless if you can just go to view->source, find this section:

".theimg { background-image:url("http://print.google.com/prin t?id=[really long semi-gibberish name]")"

and copy the url, obtaining a plain image that you can do whatever you want with... uhm, within the law, of course!

FAQ #5 -- Google's DRM for your web browser

[yeremein]

From the FAQ:

5. What can I do with books that I find?

Well, you can browse a few pages, learn more about the topics explored by the book, buy it, or commit a selection to memory. To further protect your book content, printing and image copying functions are disabled on all Google Print content pages. (emphasis added)

Google for Mastering Digital Photography and you'll see a Google Print link up front. The page is shown as a graphic, with search hits highlighted in yellow. Google somehow (probably a though a CSS hack) manages to substitute a 1x1 white pixel .GIF file for the page if you try to print it or copy its location. They also disable the browser's context menu on the entire page (not just over the image), although Mozilla can deny it the right to do that (Prefs | Advanced | Scripts & Plugins).

I'm not sure I like this. This is fairly innocuous (they can't stop a screen capture), but it still bothers me a bit that a company whose motto is "Do No Evil" is dabbling in DRM...

Sometimes you can search too much

[Eric Giguere]

I actually preferred Amazon's default search algorithm before they introduced "Search Inside the Book", because it limited its searches to the bibliographic data. Now when I do a search I get lots of books that contain the words I'm searching for, but that's not usually what I want. Annoying, and I have to go to the advanced search page for what I want.

I think keeping Google's Web index separate from the Print index is a good thing, based on this experience.

Eric
Why the Vioxx recall is good for Google

Re:mine a book through google

[Beolach]

Does anybody know if they're using texts from Guternburg for this? It'd be a good combination.

I don't think Google is using PG for this, but PG does use Google for their '"Nearly full text" search (the first 100K or so of .html, .txt, .pdf, etc.)' (see PG's Catalog page.) If you want to search it directly from Google, try using something like

site:gutenberg.net "It was the best of times"

Unfortunatly, while it works, it could be much better...

Page Limit

[Anonymous Coward]

After about 20 pages... 5 clicks in the table of context, the cover, index and perhaps two actual pages of content:

Thank you for using Google Print.

You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book.

Google protects works that are under copyright by restricting access to certain pages and restricting the number of pages you can view. You may continue to take advantage of Google Print by clicking on About this Book. Thank you for using Google Print.

Re:Launched?

[RedWizzard]

That's because it's just part of the regular web search. Try doing a search for the ISBN of the book they used in the example (1592001149) and you'll see a book result at the top.

Re:Copyright Concerns?

[Anonymous Coward]

>[publishers] also agree to give Google a license to use the materials in the way described.

For most books, the copyright is held by the author, not the publisher. Typically, the author gives the publisher rights to reproduce and sell the work, but other rights are reserved by the author. See NY Times vs. Tasini. Google cache: http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:X2C2KwvB5oAJ: www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/00pdf/00-201.pdf+N ew+York+Times+index+Supreme+Court&hl=en

See Gutenberg for complete text to many books.

[Schwarzchild]

"There are plenty of books that are out of print with no copyright restrictions on them. Since google has plenty of resources and aims to put all available information in the hands of users, would they please consider putting up the entire text of such books online? "

Project Gutenberg already does this.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as if Google can search Gutenberg texts. In this case, you could always download the texts from Gutenberg and index them yourself. Gutenberg texts have expired copyrights.

Re:Google is really stretching it ...

[Lshmael]

But for anyone doing more than storing recipes, you need a proper desktop search engine, or even just an email search engine.

And of course, your endorsement of aforementioned products would not have anything to do with being the CEO of the company that makes them, right?

Re:Google is really stretching it ...

[rainman_bc]

Yeah, but I'd really like to see Google fix the existing search problems. I'm starting to have to use other search engines to find stuff because of google-bombers. I really like Google, but finding stuff like product reviews or programming information is real chore with google web search. Groups is a different beast.